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Saturday, 19 November 2011

Freedom in Syria and England

We have far far too much international law which is a great threat to democracy and to freedom (two separate things). I was reading an account of the Assad regime in Syria and came across this: ‎"The Assad regime, like most Arab dictatorships, also quashed any religious or cultural identities, primarily to establish tight control over society." This sounded very familiar and I was reminded of and given a very telling insight into the way the EU and the governments of the EU member states work against the people of Europe. No doubt the Europhiles are convinced they act from the highest motives.

Daniel Hannan blogged a few days ago:

The past twenty years have witnessed a revolution. It has been carried out quietly and bloodlessly, but it is, in its way, as far-reaching a revolution as those of 1789, 1917 or 1979. The rule that had governed relations between states since the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 – the principle that each government was responsible for its internal affairs, and that crimes were the responsibility of the state on whose territory they were committed – has been overturned. A new legal order has been established, outside and above the nations.The new order does not take its authority from a single treaty or charter. It is protean, residing in the hundreds of international accords, conventions and declarations that national courts treat as precedent. Nor is it limited in scope. Far from restricting itself to international questions, it presumes to regulate all manner of internal matters: the rights of refugees, the status of children, employment law, religious freedom and so on.A corpus of law has been created without debate, without ratification by national legislatures, without democratic approval. Its motive force has been the activism of judges and the intimidating fervour of the human rights professionals.So far, supra-nationalists have had it almost all their own way. In plush conference venues around the world, out from under the public eye, they have enlarged and developed their jurisdiction. Funded by the global NGOs and by UN agencies, they have had time and resources, motive and opportunity. Hardly anyone, by contrast, has much incentive to speak up for the majority.That’s what makes John Fonte’s book, Sovereignty or Submission, so valuable. Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive case for souverainisme in a single volume. Fonte traces the intellectual origins of trans-nationalism. He looks in detail at the way in which NGOs, unable to get their agenda through national parliaments, turn instead to international conventions. They are, indeed, quite overt about this. The UN's conference on racism at Durban was held at the initiative of a number of Leftist pressure groups which called openly on the UN to implement policies that had been rejected at the ballot box.

Hannan makes a very important point: the true engine of integration has been the European Court of Justice. I hope people begin to see judicial activism in Britain and in the EU as a threat to democracy and to freedom.